


what's in a name

by The_Eclectic_Bookworm



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Leverage
Genre: F/M, other characters too but these three are most prevalent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 12:49:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20008561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Eclectic_Bookworm/pseuds/The_Eclectic_Bookworm
Summary: “I don’t even know her name,” Nate says finally, quietly, trying to steer the conversation to a more familiar terrain. It’s easier to be angry about what he doesn’t know about Sophie than to think about what she might feel for him—and it’s less frightening to worry about feelings when you don’t know the person behind them.Mrs. Giles gives him this amused little quirk of a smile. “You do, though,” she says. “It’s Sophie.”





	what's in a name

They meet Mr. and Mrs. Giles in the middle of a con, when they’re across the pond trying to either steal or borrow a set of very nice emeralds, depending on who you ask (if you ask Parker, she’ll definitely say _steal—_ no one’s had the heart to tell her that they’ll be returning the emeralds at the end of the con, she’s so happy to be taking them). Sophie’s at the bar alternating between drinking champagne and scowling at Nate across the room; he made one too many cracks about how he didn’t even know her real name, and it seems she’s finally had enough.

Nate is debating whether going over to the bar to get the drink he definitely wants is worth going through a very upset Sophie, who will definitely start in on him not only about his incessant questioning but also about his getting a drink, when all of a sudden Sophie lights up like a Christmas tree at the sight of the new couple that’s entered the room.

Nate turns to look.

Mr. Giles (though of course Nate doesn’t yet know that that’s his name) is a distinguished older gentleman, his hair salt-and-pepper and his hand tucked into the arm of his slightly younger companion. She’s assessing the party warily and carefully, as though she expects there to be a threat, and she stands on tiptoe to say something quietly to the man.

Nate is trying to figure out exactly why Sophie might have zeroed in on this couple when he’s almost knocked over by Sophie herself, rushing past him to all but fling herself at the man. He lets go of his companion’s hand, laughing, and pulls Sophie in for a hug; the woman’s face relaxes and she waits a few seconds until Sophie breaks away and hugs her too.

This won’t technically blow the con. Sophie’s cover is, thankfully, a sociable socialite by the name of Annabel Rivers who’s been making conversation with most of the people in this room. Nate steps a little closer, though, just in case there’s any risk of Sophie saying something she shouldn’t.

“—and he followed the GPS to the letter and took us through a flock of _sheep_ on our way here,” the woman’s saying to Sophie, a delighted laugh in her voice.

“She does like to exaggerate,” says the man dryly, slipping his arm around the woman’s waist. “Truly, um—”

“Annabel,” says Sophie, giving the man a quirk of a smile.

To Nate’s surprise, the man accepts this new information without argument. “Annabel, then,” he said. “What was that alias you used back in the Academy?”

“I was your cousin Lavinia Smythe, if I remember correctly,” says Sophie, grinning. “I believe I was quite inspired by your aunts.”

“Oh, god,” says the woman. “His aunts have been putting me through the _wringer_ at family dinners, did they ever do that to you?”

“They delighted in it,” says Sophie very seriously. “It’s how you know they’re sure about you.”

This seems to Nate like an entirely pointless conversation that will thoroughly distract Sophie from the con. He clears his throat. Sophie jumps, then presses her lips together and turns around, going back to glaring at him. A very small, very selfish part of him wants her to look at him with the same effortlessly joyful smile she gave this couple. _“Annabel,”_ he says. “We have _work.”_

“Give me a moment, will you, Steven,” says Sophie without missing a beat, and turns back to the couple. “Planning on any more children, Jenny darling?” she adds, putting on a more affected British accent that makes the man blush and the woman giggle.

“You sound _just_ like Rupert’s Aunt Sophie,” says the woman.

“Alarmingly so,” the man agrees.

 _“Annabel,_ ” says Nate irritably.

Sophie turns all the way around, presses her lips together, smiles, and says in a sweetly dangerous tone of voice, “Steven, if I recall correctly, the work we’re doing right now is mixing and mingling, and I am doing both. If you can’t help but hang about like a stray puppy, that really is your problem,” and then she turns back to the now concerned couple. The man’s focused mostly on Sophie, but the woman—is looking at Nate, cocking her head and really _assessing_ him. It’s bothersome.

Nate turns on his heel and stalks over to the bar. No reason not to drink if Sophie’s not blocking his access anymore.

* * *

The con goes off with only a few minor hitches, one of them being that Sophie ends up asking Rupert and Jenny Giles to come back and visit them at Leverage, Incorporated. Nate starts in on her in the car about secrecy, covert operations, and how Leverage, Incorporated hinges on the ability of its members to not blab to any random person about its existence. Immediately, Sophie shoots back that Nate’s just threatened because he knows Rupert and Jenny Giles are a very serious part of her life, and Nate snaps that he didn’t know Sophie even _had_ anything serious in her life because Sophie never _tells him anything_ , and then Sophie goes all cold and quiet and Parker asks (nervously, and to break the tension) if they can stop for donuts before they head back home, and do they even have donuts in Britain or do they call donuts something weird, like with french fries being chips?

“They probably do,” Eliot agrees sagely, lightly knocking Parker’s shoulder and keeping his eyes, almost reproving, on Nate and Sophie in the front seat. “Probably call ‘em hole cakes or something.”

It bothers Nate that he can’t shake off the look that Mrs. Giles was giving him, a mixture of reproving and sympathetic. It bothers him even more that he can’t just ask Sophie what the hell her friend was doing, looking at him like that, because he picked an ill-timed fight and it’s pretty clear Sophie won’t be speaking to him any time soon. He stares out the window (more like _glares_ out the window, Hardison would say) and thinks about how he’ll be back at home in only a few days’ time. These things with Sophie, they generally get put aside once it’s time for a con. She can’t be angry at him forever.

What he doesn’t think about is that anger being put aside and saved for later is a cocktail for disaster when it comes to a budding relationship of any kind. It doesn’t seem relevant to this con or the next, so he doesn’t let it cross his mind. Nathan Ford: always focused only on what’s relevant.

* * *

About two days after the run-in with Rupert and Jenny Giles, and just when Nate is starting to forget about them, they send a small envelope stuffed to the brim with photos. Sophie gasps when she sees it and tears it open, photographs spilling all over the place as she sorts through them delightedly.

“You’re making a mess on the table,” Nate points out sourly.

“That’s you!” Parker gasps, snatching up one of the photos and showing it to Eliot. “Little baby Sophie—aww!”

“I wasn’t going by Sophie back then, but yes,” says Sophie, taking the photo from Parker and grinning at it. Nate tries to look over her shoulder, and she moves it gracefully out of his line of vision, smiling beatifically up at him. “If you’re going to be rude to me in front of my friends,” she says, “you are not going to get to look at my childhood photos.”

This seems _wildly_ unfair to Nate. “You were _so much worse to me,”_ he begins, furious.

“Hmm,” says Sophie, turning back to the photos.

“And, and you’re distracting from the briefing—”

“Is there a briefing going on anymore, Nate?” Sophie makes a point of looking around the room (Parker is attempting to steal some of Hardison’s gummy frogs while he plays a handheld video game, and Eliot is presumably off making something in the office kitchen). “No? Then I’ll just keep looking through these photos, thanks.”

Nate’s impulse to be angry and petulant is at war with his desire to know more about Sophie as a child. He wavers at her shoulder, stepping quietly around her to pick up one of the photos.

The picture is of two people on the grass, grinning up at the camera: one an awkward, gangly teenage girl with closely cropped dark hair, and the other a boy in his mid-twenties, his arm thrown casually around the girl. The girl looks quite like Sophie, right up until you look at the unguarded sweetness of her smile. This girl isn’t hiding a thing, not from the camera or from the world.

Nate looks again at the boy with his arm around Sophie. Their closeness doesn’t suggest the excitable intimacy of a romance, more a pair of friends being posed for a photo—not to mention that the boy’s a good ten years Sophie’s senior in this picture. He has a familiarly shy grin, though, and it takes Nate a moment to place it: this was the expression on Mr. Rupert Giles’s face at that gala two weeks ago.

Despite himself, Nate is both intrigued and strangely jealous. It’s clear that Rupert Giles is happily married and has no interest in Sophie in that respect, but it’s also clear that Rupert Giles knows things about Sophie that she still hasn’t bothered to tell Nate. Rupert Giles might even know Sophie’s real name—no, looking at that photo, Rupert Giles _must_ know Sophie’s real name, because the Sophie in that picture is an open book.

Intrigued, jealous, and—longing. Nate doesn’t want to admit to that third emotion, but the word comes to mind despite himself. He sneaks a furtive look at Sophie; even at her most unguarded, she still isn’t as easy to read as she was in her teens.

“You’re snooping, aren’t you?” she asks without looking up from the photo.

“Can you blame me?” Nate keeps his voice light, but he knows some frustration seeps through. “Photos and puzzle pieces, Sophie. That’s all I ever get from you.”

Sophie gives the photograph a twist of a smile, one that trembles, and places it down, turning to Nate. “You know you don’t have any _right_ to know me, Nate,” she says.

“Oh, because you just love being a mystery?” Nate shoots back.

“Oh boy,” says Parker through a mouthful of gummy frogs, and gets up, slipping out of the room with Hardison and Eliot close behind.

“I don’t…love being a mystery,” says Sophie, in a strange, careful voice that isn’t much like her usual passionate anger. She looks at him, then crosses her arms, looking down. “I just feel,” she says, “that what I _am_ is more important than what I _was._ You have a certain fixation with the past, and I-I live—more in the present, I think, than you.”

Nate feels a rush of fury, exacerbated by Sophie’s quiet composure. “I’m fine with the present—I _live_ in the present,” he sputters, too angry to form a coherent argument, and snatches up a handful of photos. “What do you call this—this trip down memory lane, then, Soph? Immersing yourself in where we are right now?”

“This has nothing to do with you!” Oh, Nate’s struck a nerve, now. Sophie’s eyes are flashing as she steps up toward him. “For _once_ I would like to have an experience without you having to worm your way in and demand to know what this means for _us—”_

“Bad news, Sophie, you signed up for that when you joined the team!”

“Oh, _really? Really?_ I signed up to be _interrogated_ every time I have a conversation with someone from my past?”

“When they—” Nate stops, feeling his anger dissipate into something more tired and hurt. “When they make you smile like that,” he says quietly, “I wanna know who they are.”

Sophie looks at him, and it takes him a moment too long to realize that she’s waiting for him to say something else. Then she smiles, tightly, and leaves without looking back, and Nate is left with the photos scattered across the table and the floor.

He turns back to the photos and finds himself looking again at a slightly younger Mrs. Jenny Giles, standing in front of a burned-out husk of a school with her arm thrown around a slightly younger Sophie Devereaux. They both look singed and sooty, and Sophie has a long gash across her chest, cutting through her shirt and staining the edges red, but they’re smiling with the exhaustion of a battle fought and won.

Despite himself, Nate finds his fingertip lingering on the corner of photo-Sophie’s cheek, his eyes lingering on the bright, sweet curve of her smile.

* * *

Mr. and Mrs. Giles show up in their lives again soon after that. Nate couldn’t pinpoint the day if asked, but he knows it’s pouring rain when they stumble, laughing, into the bar, a tiny child in tow. The child is wearing a too-large yellow raincoat, rain hat, and boots, and it’s chewing on the sleeve very solemnly, its head settled on its mother’s shoulder.

“Goodness, Jenny, you’re _soaked,_ ” says Sophie with an easy laugh, pulling herself up from the booth they’d been sitting in with the easy grace of the expecting hostess. God, would it actually kill her to tell Nate when she’s inviting people to the pub? “And Rupert—your daughter wearing an atrociously unfashionable slicker such as that? Shameful.”

“It’s functional,” says Mr. Giles indignantly.

“I keep _telling_ him,” laughs Mrs. Giles, and gently hands the child over to Sophie. Sophie looks a little uncomfortable with the child in her arms, and—strangely, that touches Nate, that she’s herself everywhere. Sophie balks at sincerity, sometimes. Though she loves receiving it, she’s very clearly unsure how to go about giving it, and children require more sincerity than most. He smiles a little, looking at her, and quite by accident their eyes meet and she smiles back.

“Here, Sophie, I’ll hold her,” says Mr. Giles, taking his daughter gently from Sophie’s arms. With his free hand, he gently steers Sophie over to the counter to order them both drinks.

Mrs. Giles looks first at Sophie and her husband, then says to the both of them, “Get me a drink too, okay?” and heads over to sit down next to Nate, which is exactly the opposite of what Nate wants to happen. He nearly knocks over his beer trying to take up as much space as possible in the booth so Mrs. Giles will get the hint and give up, but Mrs. Giles just gives him a look that strong-minded women always seem to be giving him and sits down across from him.

“So,” she says.

It throws him off, the way she looks at him effortlessly and casually, as though he’s an old acquaintance. “I’m sorry, but I’m not in the habit of having personal conversations with random strangers,” Nate manages.

“Well, I’m not a random stranger,” says Mrs. Giles. “I’m Sophie’s friend, and you of all people should know how selective Sophie is with the people she chooses to trust.”

“Me of all people?” Nate scoffs.

Mrs. Giles rolls her eyes. “Jesus,” she says. “She said you were a piece of work, but I guess I was expecting her to be exaggerating.”

“Darling, _can_ you hold Janna for a bit?” Mr. Giles requests, and hurries over to the booth to plop the little girl in Mrs. Giles’s lap, then heads back over to Sophie.

Mrs. Giles gently removes Janna’s raincoat and pulls her daughter fully into her arms, surveying Nate with that same expression she’d had at the gala. It bothers him; he’s not in the habit of being assessed. “Stop that,” he says, taking another sip of his beer.

“Stop what?” asks Mrs. Giles innocuously, shifting Janna as if trying to make herself look more innocent.

“You’re _looking_ at me,” says Nate sharply.

“Oh, I’m sorry, should I not make direct eye contact with the great Nate Ford?” Mrs. Giles looks sarcastically down at her daughter, then at the table, then up at the ceiling. “Does this work better?”

Nate has had it with people who give him a hard time for no clear reason. “You know, I’d really appreciate if you stopped acting so enigmatic and actually got to why you sat down here instead of with Sophie and your husband,” he retorts, then takes a very long sip of his beer for good measure.

Mrs. Giles looks at Nate, then, and smiles a little. “I’m a little protective of Sophie,” she says finally. “A very long time ago, she saved my life, and she nearly died in the process. Despite the many, many defenses she’s built around it, she’s got one of the biggest hearts I know, and I want to make sure that the person she cares about is someone who knows the kind of gift they’ve been given.”

The truth of Mrs. Giles’s words, so gently spoken, makes Nate feel uncomfortably vulnerable and exposed. He doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about who cares about him and who doesn’t—hadn’t put a lot of thought into the concept of Sophie giving a damn about him. He’d felt, more than anything, her frustration, her anger, that thin layer of mutual attraction lying underneath it all, but he had never really considered the possibility that she stuck around because she cared. It makes him feel—guilty, more than anything, because Mrs. Giles is right. Someone who Sophie cares about should be someone who’s able to handle that care.

“I don’t even know her name,” he says finally, quietly, trying to steer the conversation to a more familiar terrain. It’s easier to be angry about what he doesn’t know about Sophie than to think about what she might feel for him—and it’s less frightening to worry about feelings when you don’t know the person behind them.

Mrs. Giles gives him this amused little quirk of a smile. “You do, though,” she says. “It’s Sophie.”

“If you’re her friend,” says Nate more derisively than he initially intended, “you probably know she’s had more names than that, right?”

Mrs. Giles’s smile doesn’t waver. “You know,” she says, fingers carding absently through Janna’s dark hair, “before I married my husband, I was completely convinced that I would never, never take a guy’s last name. I didn’t like the thought of having my identity all tangled up in someone else’s, but a lot of that had more to do with my commitment issues than my sense of individuality.”

Nate has no idea what this has to do with Sophie. “What does this have to do with Sophie?” he says coolly.

Mrs. Giles rolls her eyes and doesn’t answer. Instead, she says, “When I first met my husband, I was going by a fake name.”

Oh, god, now Nate can see why Sophie and this lady are friends. “Pulling a grift?” he asks.

“In a sense,” says Mrs. Giles. “And also not really. I’m not half the grifter Sophie is—I get attached too easily.” Janna squirms in her arms and makes a disagreeable little-kid noise; Mrs. Giles places a settling hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “But my name was _Jenny_ when I met my husband.”

Nate stares. Now he can _really_ see why Sophie and this lady are friends. “So your name’s _not_ Jenny,” he says, hearing the thread of bitter venom in his voice.

Mrs. Giles seems unfazed. “Why would you say that?”

The question takes Nate somewhat aback. “Well, it’s—” He flounders. “It’s not—I mean, you weren’t _born_ Jenny, were you? There’s a whole other person with a whole other name that you didn’t bother to tell your husband about.”

“Well, why does it matter?” Mrs. Giles smiles slightly, knowingly, like she can tell where Nate’s going with this one. “My husband fell in love with Jenny Calendar. He made that name real for me. I let my old one go and gave it to someone who could use it a little better.” Janna has started fussing with her rain hat. Mrs. Giles takes it off, then looks back up at Nate. “I don’t think anyone _needs_ to know the name I used a long time ago, because I don’t think of myself as that person anymore.”

“But you’re still—it’s still a part of _you,_ ” Nate persists. “Don’t you think your husband deserves to know about that part?”

“Are you seriously giving me marriage advice?” says Mrs. Giles. “Dangerous waters, Nate.” She glances over towards Sophie and Mr. Giles, who are having a spirited discussion about some long-ago event, and grins a little. “Rupert’s not bothered by the parts of my past he doesn’t know,” she says. “I’m not bothered by the parts of his past I don’t know. The people we were before we knew each other don’t matter _half_ as much as the people we’ve chosen to be for each other.”

The words resonate with Nate. He’s not sure if he likes it.

“Jenny Giles,” says Mrs. Giles, “is a good friend, a kickass wife, and…” She considers. “Well, it’s a little early to tell how good a mom she is, but she’s definitely trying her best.” She looks directly at Nate, then. “Does it really matter that she was someone else a long time ago?” she says, and it’s clear she’s not talking about Jenny Giles in that moment. “What matters is who she is _now._ She’s not _hiding_ anything—she’s just grown out of a name. She wants a new one.”

“How can I trust someone whose name I don’t know?” Nate persists.

“You do, though,” says Mrs. Giles. “It’s Sophie.”

Nate scoffs.

“Names are labels,” says Mrs. Giles, in a slow, patient tone of voice that sounds more suited for tiny Janna than full-grown Nate. “She’s still the same person, no matter what name she has. And honestly, Nate, I think this whole _name_ thing is really just because you like having an excuse not to trust her.”

“That’s—” Nate sputters, thrown off. “You—”

“Think about it,” says Mrs. Giles. “Seriously. Think about it. Because if you turn out to not be good enough for Sophie, I can and will rain hell down on you and…” She trails off. “Well. Not _everything_ you care about. You work with some very sweet people.”

Nate doesn’t really think that Parker, Hardison, and Eliot can be easily described as _sweet,_ but he’s too busy trying to wrap his head around what Mrs. Giles has just said to really express that sentiment.

“Keep an eye on Janna,” says Mrs. Giles. She stands up, places the kid in his lap, and heads over to the bar.

Nate looks down at the little girl, and feels that quiet, painful _tug_ that he does every time he’s around a small child. He can still remember when Sam was this little. “Uh, hi,” he says. Looking solemnly up at him, Janna reaches up and grips his fingertips. “What’s your take on this whole _name_ thing?” Nate asks.

Janna considers the question, then says, with great authority, “Splosh.”

“That’s her way of saying she wants to be back out in the rain, I think,” says Sophie, laughing softly. She bends down to pick up Janna, and Nate catches the soft, floral scent of her shampoo. “Has Jenny been putting you through the wringer?”

“A little bit,” says Nate. Something aches, suddenly, when he looks at her. It’s not necessarily unpleasant.

“Hmm,” says Sophie. “I’m going to hand Janna off to her parents.” She smiles, small and almost apologetic. “If you’d like to come spend some time with Rupert and Jenny—”

“No, I’m good,” says Nate.

There’s a strained silence. Neither of them have really apologized for the fierce argument regarding Sophie’s past, and the absence of a resolution is felt very strongly in that moment.

“I’ll just—” says Sophie.

“Yeah,” says Nate.

She goes to continue catching up with her old friends. Nate watches. There’s a warmth to her, an easy glow—and Nate notices, in the bits and pieces of conversation that he can catch from his booth, that Mr. and Mrs. Giles both make a point of calling her _Sophie._

* * *

Mr. and Mrs. Giles leave, their tiny daughter in tow, with a promise to stop by when they’re in town again. Sophie is getting ready to go herself when Nate catches her by the door. “Soph?” he says.

She turns. “Yes?”

Nate hesitates. Mrs. Giles’s words play back in his head: _you like having an excuse not to trust her._ But the thing is, he _wants_ to trust Sophie, and that in itself is kind of a flooring realization to have. It feels like a first step. He shifts from foot to foot, then says, “I _do_ know your name, don’t I?”

Sophie smiles, soft and slow, and hangs her coat back up. “Don’t you?” she prompts, because of course Sophie wouldn’t make things easy for him.

“Sophie Devereaux,” says Nate, drawing out every syllable, pronouncing the name with care. And as he says it, he realizes how accustomed to saying it he’s become: it tastes right on his tongue. It matches the woman he sees in front of him—her sharp smile, her gentle eyes, her soft, dark hair.

_My husband fell in love with Jenny Calendar. He made that name real for me._

There’s another silence between them, but it’s different. Charged. Full of something much better than anger.

“Well,” says Sophie. Her voice shakes a little. Her smile is blindingly bright; there are tears in her eyes. “I think I shall have to invite Jenny over much more often, if _this_ is the outcome.”

“Please don’t do that,” says Nate. “I have enough trouble with _you_ calling me on my shit.”

“As if you listen!” Sophie laughs.

“Maybe I don’t _use_ your suggestions,” says Nate stubbornly, “but I _do_ listen.”

“There’s no proof of _that_ just yet—”

“Sophie,” says Nate, “Devereaux.” He wants to take her hand, but he doesn’t know if he’s allowed, so he tries to convey that feeling—that desire to reach for her—through his eyes alone. “That’s your name. And I guess it shouldn’t matter who you were before her, right? Sophie Devereaux is someone I want to learn how to trust.”

Sophie looks a little overcome. Slow and soft, she smiles again.


End file.
